2003-12-10 - 1:50 p.m.
The Beetle is actually an amazingly good car to have in the snow. It's front-wheel drive. Which is good. But it's also pretty wide AND (key point) it's a heavy car. So it holds the road incredibly well.
The MAIN problem with the Beetle is that it sits low to the ground. So it has a really hard time making it over 3-foot snow drifts. GO FIGURE. I did find out last night while attempting to turn into the driveway... that if you gun the Beetle really really hard and squeal out AND if it's 34 F (note: just above freezing) that the Beetle can push through that ridge between the driveway and the road created by the plows.
Brilliant.
Of course the Girl did come running out to make sure I didn't run into her Mini. She has such little faith.
What else.
Oh. I saw the most genius snowplow this morning on Route 128 being used by the Mass. Department of Whatever. The Mass. highways departments use all this experimental snow removal stuff. Weird salts, unknown chemicals cooked up by MIT students. That kind of thing. But this snowplow was soooo cool. It had *two* plows on it. The main, big plow on the front. And then this cool side plow that extended or retracted based on the whims of the operator... and they were using it to go down the breakdown lane and squish the snow piles up off the the pavement.
Really cool stuff.
